New Endings
by kalirush
Summary: The Doctor misses Amy and Rory after they've gone.


Written for the AO3 fundraiser auction on tumblr, for star54kar.

* * *

He _really _shouldn't be doing this. He's definitely old enough to know better. He occasionally, _occasionally_, mind, thought he'd gained some wisdom in his age. Temperance. Self control.

Apparently not.

_How do you think the Could-Have-Been King_ _got his crown?_ saner voices asked him. _Do you think the rules don't apply to you, Time Lord Victorious?_

It was funny how "saner voices" often sounded a bit like Martha, to him. Or Romana, if his voices were in a particularly tart mood.

There was a world where he never came back after the whole Prisoner Zero thing. He and Amy had one adventure, there in Leadworth, and he _meant _to come back, he did, because she was brilliant. But the TARDIS was acting up, and he found himself on a space station, and he met this sentient android, and she was brilliant too. And then he lost her to one of those cracks, and in his grief, he followed them all the way to the end of the universe. He and River saved the day, and no one noticed, because who could remember what happened when the world changed? Only a Time Lord.

Amy married Rory, like she was supposed to. And Rory didn't die, and he always existed. But he did exist alone, because Amy left him after a year. She ran off to New York, and she had affair after affair, men and women that she didn't love, and her heart ached with loneliness. The Doctor wasn't sure why it didn't work out. He fancied that Rory never learned quite what he was capable of, or quite what he and Amy meant to each other. Rory never married again. He'd only ever loved one woman in his life, and she was gone.

Scratch that. Bad ending. Find another one.

There was a world where he dropped her off after the whole _kissing _thing. It wasn't fair to her, he told himself. He'd done this before, had a companion that fancied him, and it didn't end well. So he dropped her off and ran.

He'd underestimated her _temper_. She didn't marry Rory at all. Instead, she looked for him. _Raggedy man_, she told him, when she was most tired, most angry. _I'm _done_ with you leaving me behind. _Eventually, her searching brought her to Glasgow. She met a man there named Archie, and a mission. Over the years, she became something that was a bit beautiful and a bit terrible, and definitely much too conversant with the Improbability Drive that had kept Torchwood Two lurching through time and space like a drunken sailor for so long.

In the end, she found him. In the end, he stopped her. She was unrepentant. _I made you come back, Raggedy Man,_ she said, through the bars of the kindest prison he could find for her. He couldn't find it in himself to say _I'm sorry_.

Worse ending. Stop. Rewind. Try again.

There was a world where he left her waiting in her garden and he never came back at all. He went running after the crack instead, and whether because of the regeneration sickness or because the TARDIS was being temperamental, he never made his way back. UNIT dealt with the Atraxi instead, and that worked out alright.

Amy did not work out alright. She did not marry Rory. She ran to London and then Madrid and then Paris, driving fast cars and living with famous men. When she was thirty-three, she drove an Aston-Martin off the side of a cliff on the coast of Portugal. The tabloids had a field day.

He'd known that was the wrong ending from the moment he'd chosen it. No winners, try again.

There was a world where he left them both, Amy and Rory, living in their little house with the blue door. He never came back, and they always believed that he'd died at Lake Silencio. He missed them, but it was for the best, wasn't it? In time, he found other companions. There were always other companions.

But he knew the ending to that story already. Amy and Rory pointlessly separated. Amy travelled the world, because she could, and because she missed it. Rory spent his life taking care of people, because that's who he was. They didn't die young. But they didn't die happy.

Stop. Bad news, bad ends, bad pennies always turning up. What was the point of any of these endings, anyway? How was any of it different if he couldn't be with them until they were old and grey and always falling asleep in their over-stuffed chairs? Ask the right questions. Ask for what you _really _want.

There was a world where he didn't go to Central Park that day. He took them to a park on Merrick instead, where the grass was purple and the sunlight was warm and a bit orange.

The ground shook beneath his feet. Too close to the problem- too close to a paradox. If they didn't go to Central Park, they never undid the angels' feeding ground, and the consequences of that were too profound. He should know better.

He wasn't sure how many times he'd heard that particular sentiment in his long lives.

There was a world where he grabbed Rory close, and he held Amy in his arms, and he didn't let them _bloody wander off_ in that graveyard. They got back in the TARDIS and flew into the void.

And everything was fine, until Rory died a month later on Dorian. He was saving a class full of alien children from an invading army. Amy screamed and wept. _What is the _point _of you, Raggedy Man?_

_I can fix that_, he thought. Rewind the tape, change the script.

Rory didn't die. They got to safety in time. The soldiers never found them at all. Other people died instead, but that didn't matter, did it? They didn't belong to him. And everyone died eventually.

_Shaky ground_, the saner voices said.

Amy died a month later, instead. He didn't know that it was because of Dorian, but it felt like it. It wasn't a heroic death; just a stupid, pointless, meaningless accident. _I'll wait another thousand years, _Rory promised. _Just fix it. Bring her back_. _Please._

But it was all a mess. Stop. Breathe. Concentrate. Filter timelines through your fingers as though you'd taken a triple-first at the Academy and not scraped by on a 51%. As though the Academy were _relevant_ anymore anywhere outside your own head. As though you weren't parked at the edge of a Time Lock on top of a rift messing with causality in ways that were a really _terrible_ idea for no other reason than that you _could_. And because you missed your friends.

There. All better. He fixedit. He knew he could.

There was a world where a madman fell out of the sky, into the back garden of a house in Leadworth. He met a smart, brave little girl named Amy, and then he accidentally left her for twelve years. When he came back, the madman and the little girl saved the world together. And then her fiance joined them, and they all saved the world again. She and the madman and her wonderful, brilliant, brave husband and sometimes their daughter (who was also sometimes the madman's wife) travelled the universe together- righting wrongs and saving people and having a marvelous time. Until one day-

Until one day-

Until one day, he came to the little house with the blue door. And they opened it when he knocked. But they looked sad, and serious.

_We have to have a real life now,_ they said.

_We've adopted a boy, a proper little boy_, they said. _We can't go running off._

_Time machine or no_, they said_. It's too dangerous_.

_We love you_, they said, again and again. _We love you. But goodbye, Doctor. _

_There are rules_, the saner voices said in his hearts, not quite in words, a little apologetic. _They apply even to you._

Right then. We don't always get what we want.

There was a world where Rory Williams met an Angel in a graveyard. He woke up in New York with a broken heart, because he knew there was no saving him now. He was the last victim. But then there was a tearing in the world, and Amy was there, her face determined and tearstreaked. "I wasn't letting you get away," she told him, fiercely. "Don't you ever think I'm letting you go." They couldn't leave, so they stayed. She wrote and he got a job at the neighborhood clinic. They had each other, and they were happy for the rest of their days.

It's a good ending.

_Everyone grows up, Doctor. No one stays in Neverland forever. Not even Peter._

The Doctor let it all slip away.

"I'm sad," he said, frowning, glaring at the console.

_I know,_ she said. _That happens sometimes._


End file.
